If you’re looking to freshen up your marketing strategy, forget trendy marketing tricks, tips or “growth hacks.” Although these ecommerce crazes often promise unbelievable results, they end up doing more damage to your business than good.

It can be incredibly frustrating to continue implementing new strategies only to see marginal results. It’s equally disheartening to spend so much time getting your customers to your check out pages and see them flee before finalizing the purchase. However, you know that true potential for profit is found with repeat customers, and missing out on those potential sales can take a toll on your business and leave you wondering what to do next.

Many online businesses experience these obstacles. There’s no perfect formula that works for every ecommerce site, but instead of focusing on trending tips and tricks, small businesses should focus on the underlying motivations that convince consumers to buy.

Shift your focus from baseless hacks to proven psychological principles 

There are many underlying, timeless psychological principles that have been studied and proven for hundreds of years. In fact, these principles can be applied to everything — even selling online.  Neural impulses in our brains stir up emotions, stimulate thoughts and inspire actions when triggered in particular ways. Millions of subconscious influences affect the decisions we make every day.

Your customers process and analyze information in predictable and similar ways. By understanding how people process information and the psychological principles at play during the sales and marketing process, you can better persuade website visitors to buy from you. You can tap into these inherent human principles and use them to increase online sales.

How can these psychological principles be applied

How these psychological principles are applied to your marketing strategy is what matters most. For example, Blue Fountain Media witnessed a 42% increase in conversions by simply adding a security seal to their page and tapping into the psychological principle of trust. To combat the psychological phenomenon of analysis paralysis, where too many options overwhelm the subject and make it hard to arrive at a decision, BaseKit simplified its landing page design and saw a 25% improvement in sales.

You too can apply these principles to get similar results, no matter which business model you employ. Armed with the most essential psychological strategies, you’ll be able to build a strong marketing foundation, attract more visitors and make more sales online.

When you start using psychological principles to understand the underlying motivations of online customers, you’ll be able to:

  • Strategically price your products or services to boost sales and maximize profits
  • Establish trust with your customers to create repeat, lifelong clients
  • Use a simplified buyer journey that motivates your customer to purchase from you
  • Deliver excellent customer experiences that generate repeat business  
  • Leverage discount and promotional strategies that attract new customers and re-engage existing customers 
  • Execute lead follow-up strategies that allow your business to stay top-of-mind so you can convert more potential clients  

When you’re ready to take control of your online sales and connect with your prospects and customers on a deeper level, check out The Science of Selling Online.



About Camille Smith
Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, Content Marketing Strategist, Camille Smith came out to California to attend UCSB and fell in love with Santa Barbara’s perfect mountain to ocean ratio. During her time in college, Camille also worked on the growth marketing teams for several technology companies. When she’s not putting her Communication degree to use at work, she’s using her minor in French to remind everyone the correct pronunciation of her name à la française (pronounced cah-mee, not kah-meal).